Quotes of the day

posted at 8:01 pm on May 11, 2014 by Allahpundit

Hillary Clinton isn’t a candidate for president, at least not yet. But this week felt like she was very much in the 2016 grind.

One day, she was weighing in on gun control, Obamacare and social inequality. The next she was taking heat over Benghazi and facing questions about whether as Secretary of State she went too easy on the group behind the kidnap of Nigerian girls.

The rationale? To fend off critics of his wife Hillary who blame her for protecting a powerful husband who is a sexual predator. Hillary Clinton is eyeing a 2016 presidential bid.

The big question: Will Bill “I love an audience” Clinton choose to apologize to Lewinsky and his wife for the mess he placed in their lives — and appeal for forgiveness — in order to put the past behind him before his first grandchild is born . . . and reap a lotta love for being a penitent?

***

Another Democrat in the room said the vice president “talked about how the system was rigged against the middle class. He said the economic realities of the middle class are diminishing, and that the average middle-class family is finding it hard to make it economically.”

How could the Clinton State Department reject naming Boko Haram as a terrorist group?

Who was involved in blocking Boko Haram’s terrorist designation?

Are any of the so-called experts who were totally wrong still at the State Department?

Did Clinton have anything to do with refusing to designate Boko Haram?

If not, was she even aware of the controversy? Shouldn’t she certainly have been aware, considering the number of federal agencies and members of Congress that were asking her to designate the organization?

As Abramowitz has shown, the incumbent party has typically fared worse in “time for change” elections like 2016 during the post-World War II era. When the incumbent party has held the White House for two or more terms, it has won only two of nine elections since 1948. When the incumbent party has held the presidency for only one term, it has won seven of eight.

Moreover, historical data suggests that the public’s attitude today is similar to the run-up to a previous “time for change” election that didn’t go well for the incumbent party. As the chart indicates, the percentage of Americans who currently favor “different policies and programs” is closer to levels from the 2005-2006 period under George W. Bush, another relatively unpopular second-term president presiding over a weak economic recovery, than from 1999-2000, when Bill Clinton was president and the economy was much stronger.

***

Although Biden, like Clinton, supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, those calamitous wars have instilled in him a new devotion to the cautious realism that men like Scowcroft and Baker exemplify. In 2009, according to Bob Woodward, the then-secretary of state argued passionately for sending 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, at one point pounding her fist on the table and declaring, “We must act like we’re going to win.” Biden, by contrast, didn’t think defeating the Taliban was either possible nor necessary, and argued for a narrower mission focused on al-Qaeda alone. What she feared most in Afghanistan was chaos and barbarism. What he feared most was quagmire.

Biden, according to Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes’s book, HRC, was also skeptical of a Western air campaign in Libya. Clinton supported it. Biden considered the raid on Osama bin Laden too risky. Clinton pushed Obama to go for it. Clinton, perhaps remembering the way her husband’s decision to arm Croat forces helped enable a peace deal in the former Yugoslavia, urged Obama to arm Syria’s rebels. Biden expressed caution once again. “Over the last few years, and especially amid the Arab Spring, events have forced the Obama White House to choose between its prudential instincts and its great ambitions,” Traub writes. “In almost every case Biden has sided with the skeptics.”

It is not a tone that works well on the stump, and, as she demonstrated when flying off the handle during earlier Benghazi hearings, and in her nasty primary fight with Mr Obama in 2008, Mrs Clinton’s record in televised debates is shaky…

If Republicans can find a fresh, plausible candidate ruthlessly focused on improving middle class lives rather than the Culture Wars, then Mrs Clinton will have to struggle to explain to voters why they should embrace what Republicans will tout as “four more years” (of failure).

Perhaps the twin novelties of being a “first woman president” and a “first First Lady to be president” will be sufficient to get her over the line, but she shouldn’t bet on that…

It’s not just that her position is now so formidable; the prospect or call for an ideologically pure challenger is based on a flawed premise. Hillary won’t be a purist, but she will run as a progressive.

First, she actually is—with her politics sensibly tempered by pragmatism—but so were FDR and JFK’s. Second, she’s smart—and she knows that it would be a mistake to create an opening for a potential primary opponent. She did that in 2008 by campaigning initially as a candidate of restoration, not change—and by neglecting to organize in caucus states. She won’t misread the Democratic landscape again…

Biden would be the clear favorite if Hillary didn’t run. But Barack Obama is just recognizing the realities. This Clinton won’t be denied by her own party on the basis of a purist, parsed out, and phony test of her progressive credentials. Hillary won’t walk away from history; she will run to make history. She’s not retiring to be an ersatz ex-president before she becomes the next president of the United States.

Blowback

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as in if the R’s take the Senate would she want a piece of that?
if her side can keep the Senate I would think that bodes well for her..
if they loose both the House and Senate the D’s may look harder
for a fresh face..??.. maybe?

Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Looks like I didn’t miss much from last night. It’s raining here again or still. High water and hail in some places. Accidents. I won’t know how much rain I got until daylight and I can look at the gauge.

To the gentleman who said I should expect to be banned for saying his children were Eagle Scouts … I guess you’re not as connected as you thought you were. I guess your letter to the folks at Salem got passed around and perhaps, laughed at like your comments here?

COL if you’re in FL I’m looking at the Doppler right now on my flight program. Still one heckuva big storm on you guys. We drove through one in SC and one was waiting for us when we got to Savannah about 8 last night.

COL if you’re in FL I’m looking at the Doppler right now on my flight program. Still one heckuva big storm on you guys. We drove through one in SC and one was waiting for us when we got to Savannah about 8 last night.

Hilarity could kick an abandoned dog in the stomach and then set it on fire and they would still run her. She’s next in the donk ascendancy. Liberals are in denial about she negatives. Liberal want the first female president as a trophy. Two trophies in a row.

When Christians become “radicalized”, we want to share the testimony of what God has done for us through His love, with everyone we meet. We get involved in our local church and we become better fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, and American citizens.

When Muslims become “radicalized”, they want to “kill the Infidels” in the name of “Allah the Merciful”. – KJ

I blame the Muslims. They themselves do not differentiate between Radical Islam and the more peaceful sort. Sure, when the Boston Marathon is bombed or Muslims fly 757s into buildings they denounce “radical Islam” but they never actually get around to denouncing the terrorists or the act itself.

I guess the good news is that we still have a long time before the election. The bad news is that Arkansans affirms every stereotype of Southerners being ignorant hicks too damned stupid to know that Pryor is a world class pinhead.

“As I get older the world, or at least the Western world, is rapidly filling up with the talentless ambitious.”

Cleombrotus on May 12, 2014 at 8:13 AM

It comes from letting just anyone go to college. Too many people are educated beyond their intelligence. They shouldn’t have been let in in the first place and because they were they have an inflated idea of their abilities. That’s why the world is being run by idiots.

Are we witnessing an Obama “Wag the Dog” moment with Boko Haram in Nigeria? I say yes.

Consider all the scandals facing the Obama administration, especially Benghazi and the Select Committee, which Rep. Nancy Pelosi referred to as a “political stunt.” Really? Four Americans die, we’re told it was because of an anti-Islam video, no one has been “brought to justice” and THAT is a phony scandal and a political stunt? Boy, if this had been a Republican president, he or she certainly would never have been reelected because the media would have been all over it. Instead the media is doing everything possible to protect Obama.

There is an awful lot of truth in that statement. And couple it with the constant fortification of the natural tendency of the young to think more highly of themselves than they ought to think in today’s academic environment and we’re faced with a surplus of people with no accomplishments to justify their overrated self-esteem.

And couple it with the constant fortification of the natural tendency of the young to think more highly of themselves than they ought to think

It’s kind of normal for kids to do that. I fell right into it when I went to college. The first time I went home I proceded to tell everyone what was wrong with them because I had had a few psychology classes.

Right. In earlier times, people, having a Biblical worldview, understood that tendency and, in their child rearing, incorporated practices that encouraged the higher virtues as habits and discouraged the baser impulses.

Spanking was only one of those practices. Having them do chores was another. Discouraging vanity and dishonesty were others. Making them earn their rewards was another.

We’ve come a long way, baby. What the end of the matter will be is open for debate but I’m not optimistic knowing human nature.

I saw one interview where the guy referred to Killary as the 2nd coming of Jackie Onassis. They did have a couple of things in common, both were/are married to philandering husbands and both liked their public images. Killary’s has been just as well crafted by the media as Jackie’s. We know better of them by their actions not the words written by a fawning press.

I saw one interview where the guy referred to Killary as the 2nd coming of Jackie Onassis. They did have a couple of things in common, both were/are married to philandering husbands and both liked their public images. Killary’s has been just as well crafted by the media as Jackie’s. We know better of them by their actions not the words written by a fawning press.